Sterilization victim Elaine Riddick sheds a tear as she talks to the media following the Governor's Eugenics Compensation Task Force meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012 in Raleigh. People sterilized against their will under a discredited North Carolina state program should each be paid $50,000, a task force voted Tuesday, marking the first time a state has moved to compensate victims of a once-common public health practice called eugenics. The panel recommended that the money go to verified, living victims, including those who are alive now but may die before the lawmakers approve any compensation. The Legislature must still approve any payments. (AP Photo/Karen Tam)

As many as 2,000 people forcibly sterilized decades ago in North Carolina should get $50,000 each, a task force said Tuesday, marking the first time a state has moved to compensate victims of eugenics programs that weeded out the "feeble-minded" and others deemed undesirable.

The payout, which could amount to as much as $100 million, needs approval from the Legislature. But the prospects for passage of some sort of compensation are promising because the governor embraced the recommendation, and the House speaker has come out in favor of payments.

While dozens of states had programs in the 20th century that allowed people to be sterilized against their will in the name of improving the human race, none of the others has offered anything more than apologies.

Compensation "sends a clear message that we in North Carolina are people who pay for our mistakes and that we do not tolerate bureaucracies that trample on basic human rights," said panel chairwoman Dr. Laura Gerald, a pediatrician.

From 1929 to 1974, more than 7,600 people in North Carolina were surgically rendered unable to reproduce under laws and practices that singled out epileptics and others considered mentally defective. Many were poor, black women deemed unfit to be parents.

A report from the panel said 1,500 to 2,000 of the victims were still alive; the state has verified only 72 so far.

Last year, Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue created the five-person task force to decide on compensation. It consisted of a judge, a doctor, a former journalist, a historian and a lawyer.

The panel had discussed amounts between $20,000 and $50,000, and some victims and family members had bitterly complained that was too little.

Elaine Riddick, 57, was sterilized at 14 after she gave birth to a son who was the product of a rape.

"I was a victim twice: once by the rapist and one by the state of North Carolina. Normally, if you commit a crime, you pay for it. They committed the biggest crime," she said.

While taking away someone's ability to have children sounds barbaric today, eugenics programs gained popularity in the United States and other countries in the early 1900s, promoted as a means of raising the health and intellectual level of the human race.

Most states abandoned the practice after World War II when such practices became associated with Nazi Germany's attempts to achieve racial purity. North Carolina ramped up its program after the war; sterilizations there peaked in the 1950s, records show.

North Carolina is among about a half-dozen states to apologize.

Melissa Hyatt, whose stepfather was sterilized, said the task force "did what was reasonable as far as budgets and economy."

Republican Sen. Richard Stevens, a chief Senate budget writer, said $50,000 per person "seems like a small amount to pay for what they had to endure, but $100 million is a large sum for the state of North Carolina."